


countdown to launch

by callunavulgari



Series: Dark Month Collection [26]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, F/M, Future Fic, Ghosts, M/M, Nuclear Warfare, Post-Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-01
Updated: 2013-10-01
Packaged: 2017-12-28 04:25:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/987621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callunavulgari/pseuds/callunavulgari
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The world was always going to end. Science taught him that, first and foremost. All the media surrounding the end of the world came after that. Global warming, asteroids, nuclear war, zombies—between television, movies, games, and books, they had every scenario covered. Shows like Doomsday Preppers started cropping up everywhere. 2012 came and went, same as Y2K before that, and the many other ones before that. Nobody could predict the end of the world, as it turned out. It was a bit like rolling a pair of 20-sided die, or loading one bullet into an empty chamber and playing a game of russian roulette. You never really knew what you were gonna get.</p>
            </blockquote>





	countdown to launch

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GhostoftheMotif](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GhostoftheMotif/gifts).



> Dark Month 2013; Day 1. Ghostofthemotif asked for, Stiles/Anybody; general dark; all the main characters have been killed, and now they're ghosts.

The world was always going to end. Science taught him that, first and foremost. All the media surrounding the end of the world came after that. Global warming, asteroids, nuclear war, zombies—between television, movies, games, and books, they had every scenario covered. Shows like Doomsday Preppers started cropping up everywhere. 2012 came and went, same as Y2K before that, and the many other ones before that. Nobody could predict the end of the world, as it turned out. It was a bit like rolling a pair of 20-sided die, or loading one bullet into an empty chamber and playing a game of russian roulette. You never _really_ knew what you were gonna get.  
  
Personally, Stiles was always voting for the sun exploding, since sooner or later, that was inevitably going to happen.  
  
What actually happens is a helluva lot of nuclear bombs.  
  
It started with the wars, of course. Everything starts with wars. Then everyone went a little crazy after France accidentally dropped a nuke on Russia. The end times were frenzied, panicked. Lots of rioting, lots of looting, all things so typical that it made Stiles grit his teeth together and wonder if all that media attention was really just to desensitize people for when it actually happened. The fact that the apocalypse started with an accident didn’t seem to matter, because soon enough, everyone was firing off their own private cache of bombs.  
  
The east coast was hit first. Target: White House. Who fired it didn’t matter much either, because at that point it could have been anyone, and the end result was death either way.  
  
Beacon Hills didn’t have time to wait for the radiation, because the next bombs hit California.  
  
Stiles last memory was of his dad, eyes closed tight as he wrapped Stiles in his arms and threw them both to the floor. Where they were didn’t really matter. Their skin peeled, their insides boiled all the same.  
  
The movies all made it seem instantaneous. He remembered reading an article once about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, how sometimes all that was left of people were their shadows. Well, either things didn’t work that way every time or they were far enough away to not be vaporized on the spot, because dying was slow. It hurt, like getting stuffed in a pressure cooker on low and just waiting. It would have been nice if they’d have had forewarning, because then he could have just borrowed his dad’s gun and put them both out of their misery.  
  
So he dies, all nice and slow-like, along with the rest of his town. Family. Friends.  
  
Only, the afterlife doesn’t take over.  
  
There’s no pearly gates to welcome him through. No _gods_.  
  
Stiles dies, and then he rises from the ashes, staring down at what’s left of his body in horror.  
  
He’s pretty sure the apocalypse wasn’t supposed to go like this. The bombs, sure, but the ghostly horror afterward?  
  
Somewhere he’s sure he drew the short end of the stick, and he only has himself to blame.  
  
.  
  
He finds Lydia first, crouching amongst the splintered trees near the edge of town.  
  
She stares at him, confused at first, before she tells him, “The last thing I said to my mom was we need more gouda. Worst last words ever.”  
  
And then:  
  
“Why aren’t we dead?”  
  
He chuckles, because it’s either that or cry. He remembers his skeleton, still glistening with chunks of gore, his dad’s arms still wrapped around him. His dad’s body had been worse than his, and the memory of nausea surfaces, so strong that he gags before he remembers himself.  
  
“Pretty sure we’re dead, Lydia,” he tells her, sidling up to her and staring into the ashes. He’d swirl patterns into them if he thought his toes would leave an imprint. They won’t, he has no footprints.  
  
She gives him a withering look. “I meant _dead_ dead, genius.”  
  
He shrugs and they lapse into silence.  
  
.  
  
Scott’s the one who figures it out, once him and Allison have joined them.  
  
Turns out that when using an ancient magical tome you should really read the fine print before cursing you and your friends to an eternity of wandering a wasteland.  
  
“It was supposed to keep us from dying,” he protests.  
  
“Well, it didn’t work,” Lydia scoffs, throwing a poisonous look over her shoulder.  
  
Allison gives them both a dubious look. “It sort of did. We’re not completely dead.”  
  
Scott watches all of them, unnervingly quiet on the matter. None of them have tried touching just yet, not even Scott or Allison. They’re all too afraid of what the outcome will be.  
  
“So what now?” Scott asks, quiet, like he doesn’t really want to be heard.  
  
None of them have an answer.  
  
.  
  
The years pass. Or maybe it’s months. Hell, it might be centuries, though Stiles very much doubts it. It’s hard to gauge time when they’re dead, and no matter where they go, they can’t find any clocks.  
  
Walking across the US takes time—time that they definitely have, but for lack of anything better to do, they’re testing their limits. Seeing how far they can travel and while they test that, seeing how everyone else has fared.  
  
The answer is, not well.  
  
Most places they travel through, everything is ash or dust. At first, bombs are still going off. They watch towns and cities vaporize—stand in hearts of explosions and don't burn. Eventually—the longer they walk—the explosions stop. After that, they just watch everything die. Vegetation shrivels, the humans that weren’t killed by the blast are taken by the radiation.  
  
Stiles likes to think that somewhere, somebody had a bomb shelter that actually worked, but all the corpses make him cynical.  
  
They walk and walk and walk, never tiring.  
  
.  
  
They don’t talk much.  
  
They still haven’t touched each other.  
  
.  
  
They find Derek and Cora somewhere in what used to be North Dakota. Why they were there, who knows, because they aren’t really telling.  
  
“You did this,” Derek says, and Stiles nods, sharply, because the guilt stopped being a new thing ages ago.  
  
“It was that spell we did, before you left. Before the alphas.”  
  
Cora blinks, slowly, and if Stiles squints, it almost looks like she’s got ash in her eyelashes. She doesn’t, of course. It’s rained acid and none of them were touched.  
  
“Peter,” is all she says, and he fights the urge to cast a concerned glance at Lydia.  
  
“Yeah, he’s probably out here somewhere,” he sighs.  
  
“Anyone else?” Derek asks, and no one else seems to feel like saying anything, so Stiles just shakes his head.  
  
.  
  
The spell was cast on seven people.  
  
They’d always meant to cast it on Isaac—on their _parents_ —but the first round of spellcasting knocked Stiles straight into seizureland, complete with internal bleeding and a few cracked bones.  
  
They never got around to trying a second time, so the number stayed at seven.  
  
Derek, Stiles, Scott, Allison, Lydia, Cora, and Peter.  
  
Stiles had also assumed that the whole not dying thing was going to be temporary—he hadn’t been going for the immortality angle. Werewolves, banshees, and druids were enough. He didn’t want to tempt fate. But he had, because he’d been an idiot, and cast a powerful spell without knowing everything about it.  
  
.  
  
They don’t need to sleep, but sometimes, they try to. For a sense of normalcy, if anything else.  
  
If they try, they can just barely reach that hazy state somewhere between asleep and dozing. It doesn’t seem to hurt them any, and sometimes, they need to shut their brains down, just a little.  
  
They still don’t talk much, even though talking would probably make things less painful. There’s nothing really to talk about.  
  
They still haven’t touched.  
  
None of them have asked if Derek and Cora had tried.  
  
.  
  
Time goes fluid somewhere along the line. It has no meaning. It can’t be counted in the footprints they’ve left behind, or the things they’ve touched, because they don’t exist in the physical sense.  
  
Stiles wonders sometimes if he’s going mad. If maybe he already has.  
  
His world feels like a constant panic attack; too sharp around the edges even as everything else fades in and out of focus. He has no heart to speed up, or blood to quicken, but he knows what it feels like. He remembers.  
  
“Quiet,” Derek whispers one night. It’s the first thing any of them has said in ages.  
  
He must have been making noises again.  
  
“Sorry,” he whispers back, and his voice rasps, because his brain still thinks like it’s matter.  
  
The rest of them have carried on walking ahead, Cora giving them one last look over her shoulder before joining the others. Derek is doing that funny thing with his eyebrows again, the thing that makes it look like he’s angrier than he really is. Synapses don’t fire, because his brain isn’t really real, but Stiles remembers suddenly—a flash of being alive and human; Derek shoving him into a wall, Derek shoving him into trees, Derek shoving him into dirt, steering wheels, doors. Always _pushing_ , always.  
  
“You were really violent back then,” he says, because now that he’s remembered he can talk, he doesn’t want to go back to the silence. “Always touching me, pushing me, shoving me.”  
  
“I never hit you,” Derek says, shrugging. Stiles snorts.  
  
“Slamming my face into a steering wheel is pretty much the same as hitting me, hate to break it to you, dude.”  
  
Something frustrated appears in Derek’s eyes, there and gone like a sparking ember. He makes an aborted little movement towards Stiles and when Stiles realizes what it was, he starts laughing and can’t seem to stop.  
  
“What are you gonna do?” he gasps, tears streaming down his face. “Hit me?”  
  
His eyes are shut, so he doesn’t see Derek move, but he feels the touch against the back of his neck—the big palm cradling the back of his skull, pinky stroking through the little hairs there.  
  
His eyes snap open and he’s shocked silent, staring in astonishment at an equally startled Derek.  
  
“You’re touching me,” he whispers. His throat feels dry, phantom sensations that he thinks he’ll never be rid of.  
  
He presses back into the hand, _feeling_ it when Derek strokes his scalp slowly, like it’s fragile, his fingers tracing patterns into the sensitive skin at the base of his skull. He has no nerve endings—hasn’t felt the cold or heat in so very long, and Derek’s skin on his is the best thing he’s ever felt.  
  
It’s with trembling fingers that he touches back, reaching out and clasping Derek’s jaw in the palm of his hand. He trails his fingers over soft stubble, wondering at the texture. Derek doesn’t quite gasp, it’s this tremulous little breath that huffs out of him, startled and wanting all at the same time.  
  
“Please,” Stiles whispers, leaning in close so their foreheads are pressed together. “Don’t stop touching me.”  
  
.  
  
They rejoin the others with their hands still locked together.  
  
Allison and Scott don’t even make it three seconds before flinging themselves at each other.  
  
.  
  
 _Touch makes us human_ , Stiles’ mom used to say, when she was lying in the hospital bed, a book in one hand and Stiles’ hand in the other.  
  
An eternity in an empty wasteland.  
  
But at least they’ve remembered what it feels like to be human.  
  
  
  



End file.
